Ask PG: Could There be an Official HN Client? | Hacker News Reader

Ask PG: Could There be an Official HN Client?

13 pointsalariccole9 comments

There's been a lot of talk about iOS clients on HN lately. It's quite fragmented, with a lot of abandoned or inactive projects. I've built one that is the most advanced and up-to-date, and I'm considering open-sourcing it. Obviously this is a labor of love, as it's free, and there's not much to be made in such a small market anyway.

Since the site is still not optimized for mobile, I'd like to offer it up as the official Hacker News client, transferring iTunes (appsto.re/i6xC4GD) rights if needed, and let the community own it. What's your stance on this?

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Why is everyone so focused on shoving HN into an app when the site could just be made mobile friendly? There's no reason to go crazy making another app to manage when a few lines of CSS (and maybe a couple markup changes) would suffice.

They don't seem particularly willing or eager to make changes to the frontend. I don't know if that's because it's difficult to do in Arc or because pg doesn't want to risk breaking the site's mojo with some minor UI tweak that has unintended consequences or what. People have definitely complained about it from time to time.

i'm not sure how feasible it is, but a nice app to cache the current state of the top 30 posts and the discussions below them would be great for an android app. that way you could do offline reading on an airplane or other non-network/data-constrained area.

A well-built native app will always be much better and smoother to use than a clumsy mobile site.

Not if the "mobile site" is the same as the regular site and well made.

I've not talked to PG and thus don't have much to say, but I do have some fun things to run past you if you get in touch.

Email in my profile.

Is this offer open to people other than the OP? I work on an Android HN app.

Sure!

Whatever you guys decide, should satisfy majority of the community, not just iOS.

Example my app :-P

All mobile browsers including BB and WP8: http://hn.premii.com/

iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-yc/id713733435

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn

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